Putin’s war on Ukrainian power grid reveals more than he’d like

On Oct. 10, Putin started a campaign against the Ukrainian power grid. He launched about $5 billion worth of long-range missiles in several strikes numbering 70-100 missiles each and managed to leave parts of Ukraine without power for several hours and sometimes even days.

His attack is a failure and testifies not to the might of the Russian military machine, but rather to Putin’s inadequacy as a military planner.

It’s worth recalling that Putin attacked civilian targets in Ukraine from the start; he carpet-bombed Mariupol to the ground.

So why did he switch from relatively cheap carpet bombing to expensive multimillion dollar missiles? Because of air defense. His bombers nowadays will be shot down. It’s as simple as that. So, he uses missiles, many of which are also shot down — and increasingly so, thanks to new Western deliveries. The Ukrainian military shot down over 85 percent of the Russian missiles (60 out of 70) in the attack of Dec. 5.

“You have to be insane to spend expensive missiles in such a way on an adversary with intact air defense system,” says Alexei Arestovich, 47, military expert and the advisor to the office of President Zelensky.

If Putin is restricted to missiles, then why not target something military? It would appear the Russian army simply isn’t any good at finding military targets, which have a nasty habit of moving around and getting camouflaged. The whereabouts of a power grid can be Google-mapped.

Here’s the thing: The Ukrainian power grid was built back in Soviet times to survive a thermonuclear war; it’s incredibly redundant and well-protected. There’s no way a non-nuclear warhead will blow the concrete casing that shields the generating facilities. Transformers are much softer targets, and Soviet engineers knew that as well. They couldn’t shield the transformers, so they put them as far apart as possible. A Soviet substation invariably occupies a much bigger space than its U.S. counterpart; every piece stands apart from the other, with incredible redundancy built into the system and capacities for rerouting.

A cheap Iranian Shaheed-136 drone will hardly kill a transformer. More likely, it will damage the coolant system, which will be fixed in a day or two. A missile can do the job, but it’s unlikely it will severely damage more than two, which cost anywhere from $3 million to $8 million apiece. An X-101 missile costs $13 million, an X-555 $7.5 million, a Kalibr $6.5 million. But the biggest problem for Russia isn’t the price of the missiles: It’s their replacement — it takes up to nine months to deliver one.

Before the war, Russia had stockpiled about 1,900 long-range high precision missiles (900 Iskanders, 500 Kalibres, 144-101 and 300 X-555),  of which it has used about two-thirds. Before the sanctions kicked in, it was manufacturing high-precision missiles (X-101, Kalibres and 9M729) at a rate of around 100 per year, though that estimate perhaps should be revised upward.

It’s possible — theoretically — for Russia to destroy the Ukrainian power grid, were the air defense non-existent or the missile swarms big enough to saturate it. But neither is not going to happen if the West continues to supply Ukraine. And because of several bottlenecks that speak volumes about Russian army.

The first major bottleneck is the number of missile carriers: It seems Russia simply doesn’t have enough of them. It’s apparently incapable of launching more than 30-40 sea-born Kalibres in a swarm; some Kalibr carriers were damaged by Ukrainian sea drone attack, and it looks like Russia is afraid to launch from submarines.

Russian air-launched missiles are an even sorrier sight. These are mostly X-55, X-555 and X-101 missiles launched from strategic bombers in a standoff mode; a bomber “takes off from its air base in Engels, flies to the Caspian and launches missiles from over the water,” explains Roman Switan, 58, a military expert and former fighter pilot. The X-55 is an old missile, originally fitted with a nuclear warhead, built back in 1970s. The warhead is stripped and a blank is fitted, and a hellishly expensive missile with no precision guidance system to speak of is used only to saturate the air defense. X-555 is a non-nuclear variety of X-55, built later. X-101 is the most modern, high-precision. 

There’s usually around 60 or 70 X-55, X-555, and X-101 in one swarm, and, incredibly, all bombers take off from a single base: Engels. A recent Ukrainian drone attack on the base damaged one strategic TU-95 bomber and likely reduced the number of missiles launched in a single salvo several hours later by at least 16 pieces.

Russia launches the missiles over the Caspian apparently because some of them are so old, the ignition doesn’t catch on. “Instead of flying off, the missile simply drops down,” said Switan. It is especially dangerous for such antique items as X-55. Recently ecologists found over 2,500 seals dead on Caspian beaches. While the precise cause of the seal deaths has not yet been determined, X-55 fuel is highly toxic.

Were Putin fighting against Caspian seals he might have succeeded. Against Ukrainians and their power grid? Not so much.

Before the war, Russia was flaunting its new missiles: a hypersonic 3M22 Zirkon, a hypersonic Kinzhal, and a much-touted land-launched ballistic Iskander. “Our Iskanders are laughing” was a popular motto on Putinist T-shirts. But no Iskanders were used in attacks on power grid. The reason? Their scarcity — Russia is well into its emergency supply — and, most probably, the refusal of Belarus dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko to let Putin launch Iskanders from Belarus, for fear of retaliation. There’s no use to launch them from Russia: The 500-km strip along the border is already devastated.

As for Kinzhals, it seems that Russia has only three modified MiG-31K capable of carrying them, a single missile each. During every attack these MiGs took off from Belarus, loomed menacingly over the border, and then flew back. Not a single Kinzhal was launched.

Another bottleneck is the programming. Each missile has to be individually programmed: Its flight path, evasion patterns — all should be individual, better to evade the air defense. And this is something, it appears, that doesn’t happen. Russian missiles come in droves. They follow the same flight path. It seems that the small group of Russian missile programmers unmasked by Bellingcat is simply not up to the task.

It also becomes harder to hit the right target. Initially the Russian army could use Googlemaps. But increasingly it must discern; it won’t do any good to send a $13 million missile into a transformer that’s already burned down. Again, it appears Russia has no capacity to do this quickly enough.

Russian stockpiles are dwindling. Ukrainian air defense — which recently started getting its first NASAMS and HAWKs — is rapidly improving.

It seems Putin thought a terror war against the civilian population — destroying the Ukrainian power grid in winter, leaving citizens to freeze or surrender — would cause the Ukrainians either to revolt against the war or flood hapless Europe as refugees.

It was a fever dream. Apparently, nobody told Putin it’s crazy to use $5 billion worth of strategic missiles against a grid built to withstand nuclear war and with an air defense improving by the day.

His generals now have to rummage in closets for missiles that aren’t made of mud and feathers — or beg Iran.

Yulia Latynina, a journalist, worked for Echo of Moscow radio station and the Novaya Gazeta newspaper until they were shut down as part of the current war in Ukraine. She is a recipient of the U.S. State Department’s Defender of Freedom award.